[REL] Fix for Early Gato AA Bathtub blocking view

[panthercules]

In response to a question from Redwine, we have developed a fix to the problem some folks have experienced with the early war Gato AA gun weather farings ("bathtub") blocking your view of the guns, sight and target when you traverse the twin 20mm flak guns to point toward the sides of your boat.

The fix I came up with was simply to use minitweaker on the cameras.dat file to change the CameraParams Clipdistance settings to 0.45 (I did it for both dropdowns - "AA20mmPortGun" and "AA20mmStarbGun" - not sure if that's really necessary or not). A sample screenshot showing the result (i.e., with the bathtub not blocking your view) is shown below:



In addition to this minitweaker fix, DyingCrow appears to have come up with an alternative fix approach using the Silent 3ditor program - see DyingCrow's post (#21) in Redwine's thread here for more details of the problem and the alternative solutions: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...=120905&page=2

I and others in Redwine's thread thought that we had seen a fix for this posted around here a while back, but I wasn't able to find it so I had to create it from scratch - apologies to the original fixer if there is one - feel free to update this thread with links to the original fix if there was one and someone knows where it is, and give credit to the original fixer. Remembering Mav87th's early work on getting the conning tower/bridge crew to disappear from the binoculars view by increasing the clipping distance happened to provide my inspiration/epiphany for my minitweaker tweak for this bathtub thing, so thanks again Mav87th

Hope you early Gato drivers enjoy this. Works fine with patch 1.3, and doesn't seem to have screwed up any other boat/gun combos that I've tried so far, but I haven't tested them all by any means so feel free to post here if you spot any unintended consequences.

Good luck, and good hunting!

[LukeFF]

Yep, I noticed a problem. On the Porpoise class, the aft 20mm AA gun (single barrel) has its gunsight clipped off with this camera setting.

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by LukeFF

Yep, I noticed a problem. On the Porpoise class, the aft 20mm AA gun (single barrel) has its gunsight clipped off with this camera setting.

Ahh - thanks - I'll check this out tomorrow and see if one of the other settings makes both work - if not, I suspect this might have to be something you activate only if you have an early Gato with the problem, and revert back to stock for any other boat - thank goodness JSGME makes it really easy to do something like that (I've made a Gato-only version of the cameras.dat file that I've set up by itself in a JSGME-ready mod, and just load it up via JSGME whenever I have a Gato and unload it when I don't - works like a charm).

[Redwine]

many thanks...

[panthercules]

Well, bummer - maybe DyingCrow will have better luck with his Silent 3ditor approach, but I was not able to find a combination with the minitweaker settings that would fix it for the Twin-gunned early Gato without screwing it up for the single 20mm guns on other boats. So, my recommendation would be to load this up in a Gato-only JSGME-ready mod (using a copy of the cameras.dat file of your otherwise-modded install), so you can use JSGME to just activate it when you have a Gato and de-activate it when you don't.

As they say, half a loaf ...

[clayp]

What if a person cant fix it with any of those programs?

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by clayp

What if a person cant fix it with any of those programs?

Not sure what you mean? Do you mean if someone doesn't know how to use minitweaker, or JSGME or something else?

Surely, nobody who uses mods can not know how to use JSGME (it's UNTHINKABLE! ), so maybe you mean minitweaker?

That can be a bit tricky, but it's well worth learning how to use. However, for anybody who doesn't know/want to try using minitweaker for this, if they want to send me a copy of their current version of their cameras.dat file I'd be happy to tweak it for this and put it into a Gato-only JSGME-ready mod and send it back to them - just PM me with an e-mail address for me to e-mail or a link to where you have uploaded the copy of cameras.dat you want me to use.

[Reece]

I have this problem & tried opening the cameras.dat file with minitweaker but the entries are wierd, possably due to version 1.4:

Is there a later version of this tweak file?
Thanks.

[DrBeast]

Originally Posted by Reece

I have this problem & tried opening the cameras.dat file with minitweaker but the entries are wierd, possably due to version 1.4:
*snip!*
Is there a later version of this tweak file?
Thanks.

Nothing to do with the patch. The tweak file just reads the value in the wrong format. Don't remember if there's a tweaker file that reads the right format. Try S3D Editor, IIRC it's listed correctly there.

ETA: Yup, just opened up a cameras.dat file with S3D, it reads the clipping distance parameter correctly.

[Reece]

I would but I don't want .NET on my machine, causes too many problems!

[DrBeast]

Originally Posted by Reece

I would but I don't want .NET on my machine, causes too many problems!

Sorry to hear that, works fine for me (and I'm pretty trigger-happy when it comes to Microsoft and its products ).

[skwasjer]

What problems does .NET give you?

[Reece]

On my XP Pro, I get lock ups, reboots whenever it feels like it!, I have probably installed v1.1 & 2 atleast 3 or 4 times & wierd thing start happening, lucky I allways ghost my machine regularly & each time I can go back and all runs ok again, there maybe a problem with this installed version of XP, it's the same version I installed quite a few years ago, I would hate to have to re-install from scratch, would take weeks to get it all back in!! I have Trainz 2006 & this requires .NET but rather give it a miss than install, one thing that annoys me is the fact that you have to have all the various versions in, for the app that the version was designed in, typical Microsoft!

[donut]

is this mod, patch 1.4 compatible ? I hope,someone was asking for a fix recently

[Reece]

Not with the minitweaker only with S3D Editor, I would just ask someone to do the mod for me but there are different versions of cameras.dat, I'm using ROW mod version.